Vaseline has found itself at the centre of an unexpected social media moment after a Korean skincare creator’s pronunciation of the brand name turned into a viral meme.
The trend began with Korean beauty creator Min Day Lee, who shared a video showing her collection of Vaseline products. Her enthusiastic pronunciation of “Vaseline” sounded like “Baseline” to many viewers, and the phrase quickly caught on across social media.
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What started as a skincare video soon moved beyond its original context. Users began repeating the audio, creating remixes and using “Baseline” in posts about their own everyday obsessions. The simplicity of the audio also made it easy for creators to participate without recreating Lee’s original video.
Rather than ignoring the trend, Vaseline has acknowledged it on its own Instagram presence.
The brand posted “BASELINEEEEEEE”, directly adopting the pronunciation that had become the centre of the meme. The move effectively takes the joke from user-generated culture into the brand’s own communication.
The brand has also asked audiences to “Stay Tuned”, suggesting that it may build further content around the trend.
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For Vaseline, the moment is notable because the brand did not create the cultural conversation itself. It emerged organically from a creator’s content and was subsequently picked up by users before the brand entered the conversation.
The pronunciation itself is also linked to Korean phonetics. The English “v” sound does not have a direct equivalent in Korean, meaning foreign words containing the sound can be approximated using sounds available in Korean. Lee later addressed questions about her pronunciation in a follow-up video.
